Faustus Resurrectus (27 page)

“You want them to
really
pay.”

A group pushed forward, provoking threats and a few punches.

“So we agree,” he went on, voice rising. “You know what you want. You have the focus, but do you have the
desire
to get it?
I
do. Everything I want is just beyond my reach, but I can see it. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get it. No one will stand in my way.
No one
.

“Who’s with me?”

As the mob roared he scanned the hall, eyes coming to rest on a Hispanic man wearing a nylon skullcap. The man kept his head low, hiding in the center of the crowd. Valdes glanced back at Faustus, who nodded grimly.

“You, sir,” Valdes said in a voice of shaved ice. “Would you step up here for a moment, please?”

The man looked startled. A circle suddenly cleared around him. He turned to the left but saw Melvin brandishing a machete. He looked right and saw Officer Burt in his filthy uniform coat and police hat, clenching fists that sported brass knuckles. He whirled to make a break for it—

Coeus emerged from the shadows and slammed him to the ground with one punch.

The mob howled. Valdes watched with satisfaction as the giant snaked his pipeline arms into a full nelson around the dazed man’s neck and marched him through the chaos to the stage. He glanced around the room and jerked his head. Dez, Bridget, George and The Jogger pulled tarps off four long tables, revealing knives, swords, nail-studded clubs, machetes, broken bottles…

Everyone in the room started grabbing weapons.

“Does anyone else here recognize an undercover police officer when they see one?” Valdes motioned for Dez to join him on stage.

The Hispanic man struggled in Coeus’ grip. “Man, the fuck’re you talking about? I ain’t no motherfucking cop!”

Valdes ignored him. “His shoes, my dear.”

Dez pulled the hiking boot off his right foot and handed it over. Valdes peeled back the insole and held it high for everyone to see. A shiny badge caught the light just right, winking at them all. Those in front screamed obscenities, and as one the mob surged forward.

“You can’t kill me!” the Hispanic man shouted. “I got back-up coming!”

Valdes’ snarl described his disbelief. “I will never let the police stand in my way,
ever again
.” All of his anger, every bit of his rage, was furiously controlled, channeled into his words. He turned to the crowd. “And as of this moment, neither will any of
you
.”

He pushed the man off the stage. The mob fell on him, drowning his screams.

“Now go,” Valdes growled, “take the park.”

NINETEEN

THE SIXTH TYPE

“Y
ou all ready?” Donovan asked Lude. He waited for an affirmative before flipping down the front of his motorcycle helmet. “Hang on.”

He rode the Vulcan up Eighth Avenue and around Columbus Circle. Picking his way through the traffic of some sort of construction project that involved concrete cinder blocks and wrought-iron fence spires, he followed Broadway uptown, towards 106
^th
Street. He parked on 106
^th
and West End Avenue. Central Park West was three cross-town blocks away. It would take a few minutes to walk to the Cancer Hospital from there, but the distance would give him time to review with Lude. He would have preferred to leave her behind in the relative safety of his apartment, but her attempts to describe where Joann’s cell was in the hospital were scattered and unreliable. Her presence, though, had given him a plan.

“You’re
sure
no one knows you left to escape?” He locked their helmets to the Vulcan, slipped the keys into his boot, and started walking.

“If anyone knew, I’d be dead.” She smiled nervously. “Don’t tell them.”

“Just be cool. This will work. You said you guys were out all day gathering people? I’m your newest recruit.” At the apartment he’d changed into ratty clothes, and splashed some Bushmills on himself for effect. “Get me inside and we’ll go down to Joann’s cell. We’ll try to get in and out before anyone knows what’s going on.”

“If you say so.”

At the corner of 106
^th
and Manhattan Avenue, Donovan looked down towards Central Park West. A wooden fence screened the lower half of the block. Tall shadows of buildings loomed in the meager streetlight. Saliva evaporated from his mouth. His heartbeat drummed louder but softened as they got nearer—there was no noise, no sound coming from inside the compound. He glanced at Lude, who looked confused herself. They approached a gate in the fence and he saw it had been nearly torn from its hinges. The dirt and stray papers nearby were flattened, and some garbage that had been within the fence was now scattered and blowing in the street.

Deserted?

He glanced around and stepped through the opening.

The Cancer Hospital was no modern concrete and steel cracker box; with its corner turrets and Gothic architecture, it seemed designed more for restraint than recuperation. Even with occasional sounds from the nearby traffic the courtyard felt intensely isolated. Darkness filled the clearing with insulating numbness. Litter blew around his ankles while a million broken bottles crunched underfoot. The buildings looked condemned for a century, too creepy even for squatters. He turned to scan for signs of life behind the empty windows. Four stories up, light flickered in a turret atop a corner tower.

“You said she was
down
stairs?” Lude nodded. He angled his head towards the light. “Do you know what that is?” She shook her head. He stared up at it for a moment longer, filled with uneasy suspicion that it was important. Time was an issue, though, so there was only one priority. “All right,” he said, turning away, “let’s go find Joann.”

“When I left, this place was packed with people,” she whispered. “Two or three hundred, at least. Where is everyone?”

“I think we’re about to find out. Which way is downstairs?”

“Over here.” She led him through a door-less doorway into a filthy brick stairwell. Cracked, worn concrete steps led down, illuminated by a lone string of twenty-watt bulbs. “The way to her cell leads right past the dining hall,” she whispered. “That’s where Mister Valdes set the party up.”

The further they went down, the more he got the feeling the place had been abandoned. There was the same atmospheric quality of chaos and recently spent energy here as at his apartment after the fight. Water stains, patches of black mold and crumbling plaster and brick marked every step of the way with nightmarish graffiti. It smelled musty and damp, with an undercurrent of unwashed body, but he was surprised there was no bitter stink of urine in the mix.

Valdes kept that much order, anyway.

They approached a right-angle in the corridor, and Lude slowed to sidle next to Donovan. “The dining hall is around here.”

Donovan saw flickering light on the wall. “What’s that?”

“He had Dez and George get some DVDs to show. Lots of really gross horror movies, and a bunch of porn. Bad porn, with rape and stuff.”

Rounding the corner, Donovan saw a set of double doors that had, like the gates in the fence outside, been destroyed. Within the room, he could see garbage and broken liquor bottles scattered everywhere. He drew cautiously up to the entrance, making sure no one was hiding in the shadows. The hall was deserted but not empty. Eight television monitors flickered mutely, showing what Lude had described—violence, porn and violent porn. Long tables around the room were empty, with paint-spattered tarps lying in heaps behind them. In front of the stage were the mangled remains of a Hispanic man, his body literally torn apart, intestines and their pungent stink spilling a chunky puddle around him. The funk from the hall was much stronger in here, tempered with the sour smell of spilled beer and the sweet, burned fragrance of marijuana and other chemicals. Riding high above it all, almost imperceptible, was the fireworks scent of gunpowder.

Lude came up behind him. “Where’d they go?”

“No idea.” He turned away from the carnage, back towards the entrance. “Which way to Joann’s cell?”

She led him down to the next lower level, but as they approached the door he got no sense of any life, let alone of the woman he loved. It was no surprise when he peered through the cell’s small window and saw it, too, was empty. Frustrated, he kicked the door in and entered. His white robe, the one Joann had been wearing when they’d taken her, lay in a heap on the floor. Carefully he gathered it up, his throat narrowing as he raised the bundle to his nose and connected with this tiny piece of her.

“Do you have
any
idea where they could have gone?” he asked, his voice rougher than he’d have expected. “Where Valdes could have taken her?”

Lude shook her head, relieved that she was safe but sad that she hadn’t been able to help more. “They was just here. They can’t have gone far—”

That was when the darkness came.

***

Of all the bars along midtown Ninth Avenue, Rudy’s is maybe the best place in which to disappear. It’s dark, usually very crowded with a good mix of twentysomethings and old men, and they serve hot dogs. It was also close enough to Midtown North that Fullam was able to walk without wearing himself out or spending what was probably his last paycheck on a cab.

The sergeant sat nursing a Dewar’s on the rocks and inspecting his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Self-loathing filled his gaze. He lifted his glass off the bar. “We whose careers are about to die,” he muttered, toasting himself, “salute you.”

A tall man in black sidled up next to him. Fullam obligingly leaned to the side to allow the man to get to the bar.

“Hello, Francis.”

Fullam cocked his head. “A little out of your neighborhood, aren’t you, Maurice?”

“I’ve been looking for you.” Father Carroll shook his head at the bartender. “You really shouldn’t turn off your phone. People might need you.”

“Yeah, right.” The sergeant snorted. “In the middle of all this weird stuff, I’m the guy to call.”

“Have you forgotten about Lisette Osorio?”

“That was then, this is now.” A hard smile carved Fullam’s face. “If you would care to remember, I didn’t particularly enjoy myself with that Santeria stuff, either. And this seems a lot worse. Of course, it’s none of my business anymore. If I’m not officially fired yet, I will be after tomorrow.”

“Donovan and I need you, Francis.”

“I show my face and Hugh gets wind of it, he might have me shot. Donovan seems like a good guy, and I feel for him with Joann being kidnapped, but this is way beyond us. Staying away is the right thing to do.”

“‘Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth hearts.’” Although Father Carroll’s voice was only one among scores of voices battering the bar walls, his words left no room for questioning. “Do what you think best. I must go.”

The sergeant’s eyebrows rose. He set his glass aside and followed the priest out.

***

Although nothing physically changed in the room, Donovan staggered back and had to brace himself against the wall of Joann’s cell. Lude watched him, curious. “You okay?”

“Didn’t you feel that?”

She shook her head. “Feel what?”

He bundled the robe tight and tucked it under his arm. “Come on.”

Every step they took towards the stairs, and then up to the courtyard outside, brought them closer to the source. All the pain and sickness that had sunk into the hospital walls over the years now seeped free, and Valdes’s evil floated atop it like an oil slick. The air thickened, hard to walk through and harder to breathe. Donovan’s field of vision narrowed into a black-framed tunnel. He stretched out one hand to make contact with something solid and was grateful for the sandpapery feel of the concrete wall.

Outside, his dread was multiplied a hundred times. A fog of desperation billowed through the hospital complex, inspiring a strong urge to run.

“Joann.”

Saying her name aloud gave him strength. He steadied himself and gazed up, looking for clues. The turret where he’d seen the flickering light was barely visible; somehow, the night seemed to have grown darker, more dangerous. White flashes that might have been electrical discharges blinked around the brick tower and glided towards Central Park.

Electrical discharges don’t move with purpose.

Lude stared, eyes wide. “What’s that?”

***

“Central, this is One-Delta-Eight.” Officer Kevin Whitsett steered his blue and white cruiser down Central Park West but was unable to enter the transverse road. “Advise Central Park Precinct they have unmonitored police vehicles blocking intersection 85
^th
Street and Central Park West. We are proceeding on foot.” He parked perpendicular to the obstruction so the headlights shone into the park. “Come on, Joe,” Whitsett opened his door, “let’s see what’s up.”

“
Copy, One-Delta-Eight.
”

Officer Joe McIntyre squinted into the gloom. “Pretty dark in there. Didn’t they get money for streetlights in this year’s budget?”

They left the headlights and revolving cherries on, but the light failed to penetrate into the park as the men would have expected. It was as though the blackness was something other than the night air.

McIntyre unhooked his nightstick and tapped it on one Central Park patrol car hood. “Hello? Anyone home?”

A woman staggered out of a clump of brush, her head low as she clutched the tatters of her dress. She took a few steps and dropped to her knees. The officers ran to her side, McIntyre unhooking his radio.

“Central, this is One-Delta-Eight. Request ambulance and female officers at 85
^th
Street and Central Park West entrance. Probable sexual assault victim.”

“Take it easy.” Whitsett knelt next to her. “We’re police officers. We’ve got you. We’re—”

“Dead.” A broken bottle suddenly appeared in the woman’s hand, and she slashed it across Whitsett’s throat. He gasped and slapped a hand to the wound. Blood gushed between his fingers and showered her in a grisly baptism.

“Holy shit!” McIntyre dropped his radio and pulled his gun. “Drop it, lady! Kev!
Kev!
Are you all right?”